


Our veins are busy but my heart's in atrophy

by illuminatedcities



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M, villain!Harold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:58:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3920329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illuminatedcities/pseuds/illuminatedcities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Pathological lying,” Harold says, eloquently raising an eyebrow. “Cunningness. Pragmatic morality. Lack of remorse or guilt.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our veins are busy but my heart's in atrophy

“Is it done?” Harold asks, both of his hands splayed over the keyboard like a concert pianist’s.

 

John flexes his hands.

Baker fought back, panicked and messy, and kicked John’s gun under the couch. He couldn’t match John’s training, but he was scared, and in John’s experience, people who are scared to death develop surprising amounts of strength in a fight.

 

John had to strangle him with a telephone cord, a nasty, slow way to kill somebody, counting twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three in his head until he felt the tension go out of Baker’s muscles, the cable pulled so taught inside of his palms that he will have angry purple marks there for weeks.

 

“Yes,” John says, and takes the first aid box out of a drawer with steady hands.

“I didn’t find anything in his apartment that hinted at his assassination plans, though, he must have been very careful.”

 

Harold types a string of code while looking at the screen, fingers flying over the keyboard. He doesn’t have to go back to correct himself once, his concentration impenetrable.

 

“Mr. Baker had no intention to assassinate Miss Quinn,” Harold says, like that’s obvious.

 

John looks up from where he has been cleaning the cuts on his hand with cotton swabs.

 

“You said he was the danger to our number,” John says.

 

He must have knocked over the bottle with disinfectant at some point, liquid spilling over the table, the sharp tang of alcohol in the air. John can’t take his eyes off of Harold, his serenity like the eye of a storm.

 

“I said Mr. Baker was a danger, which is an accurate assessment,” Harold says primly, as if John is being particularly obtuse.

 

Before John knows what he’s doing he has crossed the distance between them and turned Harold’s chair around by the back. Harold looks up at him, startled.

 

“Did the Machine tell us to kill Baker,” John says numbly, his hand shaking where he is gripping the back of Harold’s chair.

 

He can’t see Harold’s eyes through where the light are reflecting off his glasses, little blue screens instead of eyes, but he knows what he will see there:

An expression of Oh John, I thought you would have understood by now.

 

“No,” Harold says.

 

John feels like he is going to be sick.

 

“What about the others? Callahan? Bishop?”

 

“I asked you once if you wanted to stop crimes from happening,” Harold says evenly. “And that we do.”

 

“You didn’t answer my question,” John says.

 

The blood beneath the skin of his palms is thrumming like it has its own pulse: Killer, it says.

 

Harold stands up, steadying himself on the tabletop with one hand.

This close, John can see the pattern on his pocket square, every meticulous stitch on his suit.

 

John could reach out and touch his skin, warm and real and not some metal part of a Machine.

 

John could reach out and snap his neck, or kill him a dozen different ways.

 

“There are a number of ways to determine a person’s potential for violence and murder,” Harold says, as if he is lecturing to an invisible class.

 

He is no match for John’s height, but there is something about him that has always commanded attention, like a black hole that draws in all of the light in the room.

 

“The Psychopathy Checklist comes to mind, an assessment tool for the presence of psychopathic traits. See, John, during my research when we were working a number, I have been noticing patterns that indicate that certain people - often not a direct threat to the numbers - might in fact become violent, even homicidal in the future. I developed a search algorithm that checks for these traits in particular, and given you orders when I felt that the situation demanded it.”

 

“You had me kill innocent people because you thought they might commit a crime at some point.”

 

Harold is searching his face, as if he is confused that John doesn’t understand.

 

“I don’t think ‘innocent’ is the applicable term here, John,” he says, a teacher scolding his student. “And I had you take care of them so they would never, in fact, end up committing a crime, when it was only a matter of time until they would. Maybe not next week, or even in a few months, but ultimately, somebody would have fallen victim to who they are, what they are. I had you save lives, John.”

 

He sounds detached, like simplifying a piece of code for John, putting the whole word in neat, simple terms, and John knows that he is wrong, that he must be wrong about this, but he finds himself unable to argue with Harold.

 

“I have taken the work of the Machine to its logical conclusion, John,” Harold says. “The numbers give us a way to stop violence from happening, but by the time they catch our eye, those people are already in significant danger. I have found a way to avoid some of the numbers appearing on our radar by preemptively neutralizing the threat, possibly years in advance.”

 

John closes his eyes.

 

“How do you determine who will be a threat?” John asks.

 

When he looks at Harold again, Harold seems even closer, the lapels of his jacket inches from John’s fingertips. John can feel the blood rushing through his body, that free-fall moment of danger, the sound a gun makes when you release the security latch.

 

“It is a very clear set of characteristics that determine if someone is dangerous,” Harold says, cocking his head to one side. “Antisocial, psychopathic, whichever you prefer.”

 

John could leave. He could walk out of the door and start a new life and never come back, and Harold might let him, make sure the money in his bank accounts never runs out.

 

John could put a bullet in Harold’s head and then one in his own.

 

John could run, run, run, but he doesn’t move an inch.

 

“Pathological lying,” Harold says, eloquently raising an eyebrow. “Cunningness. Pragmatic morality. Lack of remorse or guilt.”

 

“Harold,” John says, and it sounds like he’s begging even to his own ears - begging him to stop, or to continue, he’s not sure.

 

There’s a gun beneath his jacket and his palms are bruised and bloody, and if Harold asks him, he will gladly put his hands around somebody’s neck until their pulse dies under his fingers.

 

“Do you have a fondness for Shakespeare, John?” Harold asks, as if they are having a pleasant conversation over dinner. “I believe it is a passage from Henry VI that I’m thinking of:

 

“I can add colors to the chameleon /  
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages /  
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.”

 

Machiavellianism is, of course, not an official diagnostic criterion, but I do find it matches the spirit of the endeavor well.”

 

“If you were someone else,” John says, his voice hollow and strange, “if you found either of us through the Machine, would you – would you have us killed?”  
Harold looks surprised at that.

 

“Of course I would, John,” he says, softly. “It is only my affection for you, and your devotion to doing the unpleasant thing that makes me want to keep you from harm, but these are not rational parameters: These things aren’t objectives. As for myself…”

 

Harold smiles, or pretends to, a close approximation of a human expression of happiness, now that John knows what to look for.

 

“It takes one to know one, isn’t that the expression?”

 

John can feel the room spinning around him. He pulls up a chair and sits down, head in his hands.

 

“I understand if you’d like to terminate your employment in light of these recent circumstances,” Harold says. “I understand if you’d – like to leave me.”

 

John swallows a wail, with the last sentence pushing him up from his chair, nearly throwing himself at Harold, because never, never, Harold must know that:  
John could never leave him in a thousand years.

 

He drags Harold close by the collar, their mouths clashing together, and finally Harold’s resolve seems to crumble under his hands, because he kisses him back with a fierce hunger, hands fisted in the fabric of John’s shirt.

 

“You’re not–“ John starts when they break apart, both panting heavily, and Harold pushes his jacket off his shoulders, undoes the buttons on his shirt with trembling fingers.

 

“You care,” John says, almost desperately.

 

Harold looks up at him, blue eyes huge and startled.

 

“I care about you, that’s not compassion, it’s selfishness,” Harold says, getting rid of his shirt and getting started on John’s belt buckle, and John is shivering all over with anticipation and arousal, every bit of doubt wiped from his mind.

“I’d do whatever you asked me to, I don’t need to know,” John says, and Harold jerks at his pants so they end up pooled around his ankles and pulls him down for another deep kiss.

 

Harold ends up bending him over the desk with his palm pressed firmly against John’s neck, and John is so helplessly turned on by now that he can barely speak, just waits patiently while Harold disappears to fetch lube and a condom from god knows where.

 

Finally, his hands are on John’s back again, and John makes a startled little noise, his eyes still squeezed shut, and Harold strokes soothing circles over his skin, an apology.

 

You’re not a bad person, he wants to say, except John is not sure that’s true at all:

 

Harold might just be a person who has made good and bad decisions, and maybe a few more bad ones than good ones at this point.

 

Still, even when Harold had fixed his eyes on him and said “Yes” in that calm voice, John had known that he was doomed, that he would light any match that Harold handed him, would pull any trigger.

 

“Harold,” John says, and then a few more times because it feels good to say it, to remind himself where he belongs.

 

Harold slides two fingers into him, and John lets his head sink against the cool metal of the desk, his entire body vibrating with need.

 

He doesn’t know how much time passes, except finally he is desperate for Harold to fuck him, his hands clenched around the edge of the desk, and when Harold withdraws his fingers and he hears the sound of the bottle of lube opening, John nearly weeps with relief.

 

“Tell me what you would do for me,” Harold says, his cock pressing in, and a helpless, desperate sob makes its way out of John’s throat.

 

“Anything,” he says, Harold’s hands leaving marks all over him, holding him steady, holding him down. _“Anything.”_


End file.
